


Waiting Up

by Kacka



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Background Character Death, Background Relationships, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 06:37:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5902156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kacka/pseuds/Kacka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy doesn't know Octavia's friends that well when they move in with him and Miller. It takes him a while to adjust to the fact that he's not the only one looking out for his housemates anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting Up

It begins with a locked door.

Bellamy grew up in a neighborhood that wasn’t all that safe, and even though they live in a nicer house on a safer street now, it’s ingrained deep in his DNA to make sure the door and all the windows are locked when everyone is in for the night. 

He’s used to taking care of people, used to worrying about other people’s safety so they don’t have to. It’s part of what makes him a good cop, he thinks. It’s just what he does.

It’s understandable, then, that it takes him about four minutes to realize that the reason his deadbolt won’t turn in the door is because it’s already locked.

He’s not sure at first who it is that beat him to locking the door. It’s completely out of character for Octavia and Miller, both of whom he’s lived with before. He doesn’t know Clarke, Jasper, or Monty that well yet. They only moved in this week and they’re Octavia’s friends, not his. He doesn’t think much of it, but it keeps happening. Every night, someone slips into the front hall unnoticed and makes sure to turn the bolt. It’s not a big adjustment to his routine, he still checks before he goes to bed, but it’s kind of a relief to know that he’s not the only one thinking about it.

The next thing that happens is that someone tapes a piece of paper to the fridge (they don’t actually have any magnets), titled  _ Emergency Contacts (put someone’s phone number down, bitches).  _ Surprisingly, almost everyone has already filled it out by the time he sees it. Most have written their parent’s phone number down, but Octavia has written her number by his name and vice versa, and Clarke has put the number for Jaha Memorial, the city hospital.

“You trying to be funny?” He asks her when she wanders in and starts rooting around in one of the cupboards.

“Hm?” She grunts. He doesn’t know Clarke that well yet, but they have to get up at similar times for work (though he’s not sure what it is she does) so he does know she’s kind of a zombie before coffee.

“I think this joke would have gone over better if you’d just written 911 instead of looking up the number for the hospital,” he says, passing her an already full mug and tapping the phone number she’d scrawled.

She just squints at him for a minute (he also knows she usually has glasses on before she puts her contacts in, but that she also loses them a lot) and chugs half the mug (which is impressive because it’s still steaming) before telling him in a raspy voice, “I didn’t have to look it up.”

She’s gone before he can ask anything else, and when he mentions the weird encounter to Octavia she just rolls her eyes. She does that a lot when he speaks. He’s used to it.

“Her mom works there, dummy. You knew that.”

“How would I know that? And why wouldn’t she just put her mom’s cell number?”

“Because her mom doesn’t answer her cell during work hours. Can you simmer down? This is not actually a big deal.” Her eyebrows draw together and he can see that same face on a younger Octavia, trying to figure out which block to pull out in Jenga. It’s devious and calculating and he has come to fear that look. “You’re actually worried worried she’s not taking the emergency contacts list seriously enough, aren’t you?”

“I just think the list is a good idea, that’s all.”

Octavia laughs out loud now.

“Bell, the list was Clarke’s idea.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. She’s a resident at Jaha Memorial. Putting that list up is just like her.”

And Bellamy comes to learn that it is just like her.

It’s just like her to be the one in the house everyone goes to when they need disinfectant or some cold medicine. It’s just like her to stick a fire extinguisher under the kitchen sink and tape a neatly written reminder that it’s there on the outside of the cabinet. It’s just like her to replace the shower curtain when the old one starts molding or to teach Octavia how to properly defrost meat or to help Jasper get the lice out of his hair after he spends the weekend with Maya in her family’s mountain cabin. 

The third thing that happens is that he realizes she never goes to sleep until everyone is inside the house.

He doesn’t notice right away. He knows that whenever he’s had a late night at the station, her light is usually on when he gets back. She’ll wave when he passes her open door and he’ll smile, and by the time he’s walking back past her room to go to the bathroom her door is usually closed and her light is off. 

What makes him put it together is when he’s waiting up for Octavia one night and Clarke picks her things up from the living room and tells him goodnight well before he thinks she normally goes to sleep.

“Turning in early?” He asks, eyebrows raising.

“What?” She pauses at the foot of the stairs and he feels the tips of his ears go hot. He didn’t mean to notice her sleeping patterns. She’s probably going to think he’s creepy now.

“I just meant– You’re normally up late, right? Sometimes I get in after midnight and you’re still awake, so…”

“Oh,” she says softly. “No, I just like to stay up until I know everyone is home safe.”

Bellamy is stunned. He’s never had anyone look out for him like that before. Even Octavia, who definitely expressed concern about his physical well-being when he joined the force, never worried quite that much. He doesn’t know how to handle that yet, so he says, “But Octavia isn’t home yet.”

“She didn’t tell you?” Clarke asks, rolling her eyes in perfect imitation of his sister. “She would leave that for me to do. She’s spending the night at Lincoln’s. She told me not to wait up.”

“Great,” he mutters, pushing himself up to stand and stretch. “Thanks for the heads up, O.”

She’s halfway up the stairs ahead of him when he remembers something else.

“Hey, I’m pretty sure Jasper is the only other one home. You’re not waiting up for Miller and Monty either?”

She smirks at him over her shoulder.

“They’re on a  _ date _ . I’m going to wait up, but I’m going to give them a little privacy about it.” She pauses again in her doorway as Bellamy digests this information. Miller had said something about going out with someone tonight, but Bellamy is sure Miller hadn’t said he was going out with Monty. Bellamy definitely probably would have remembered.

“There goes my night,” he says in mock exasperation.

“Big plans,” Clarke teases, leaning against her doorframe. She’s already in a pair of felt pajama pants and an oversized t-shirt from a 5K she made Octavia run with her their freshman year of college. Her glasses are on and her curls are piled on top of her head messily but she smiles and it just pops into his head that she’s kind of adorable. He’s not sure what to do with that either.

“Yeah, I’m trying to convince myself it’s not sad I didn’t have anything better to do tonight than play video games while I waited for Octavia and Miller to come home so I could make fun of them about their love lives.”

“You’re such a good friend.” She bites her lip in consideration. “It is only nine. Do you want to come watch tv or something on my laptop?”

He’s surprised. They hang out together sometimes as part of the larger group, but she’s never initiated any one-on-one friendship with him. He’s even more surprised to hear himself agreeing, and he ducks into his room to change into sweatpants and take his contacts out before returning to hers.

“You wear glasses too?” She asks, looking up from her laptop. She’s sitting sideways on her bed, about a million throw pillows piled up by the wall for them to lean against. “How come I didn’t know?”

“Because unlike some people, I’m a morning person,” he says, climbing up next to her and taking the blanket she offers him. “I’m funcional without caffeine, see, and so I can put them on before I come downstairs. And I don’t leave them lying around random places in the house.”

“I don’t do that.”

“Clarke, I found your glasses in the fruit bowl this morning. They were under a banana.”

“Okay, first of all, why do we have a fruit bowl? It’s like you think we’re real adults. And second of all, you couldn’t have because they were on my bedside table after my shower.”

“Yeah, because I put them there,” he says, smiling sheepishly when she raises one eyebrow at him. “I did debate leaving them and timing how long it took you to find them, but I decided we’re not on that level of friendship yet.”

“I didn’t know you had such a defined spectrum,” she says, laughing again. Clarke isn’t a bubbly person, but her laughter tends to spill over like she’s trying to hold it back and can’t contain it all. It makes him feel like he earned the laugh.

“Oh, for sure. The better friends we are, the fewer nice things I do. I basically trick people into befriending me.”

They watch a few episodes of  _ Brooklyn 99 _ because she apparently always wants to reference it and is never sure that anyone in the house will pick up on it, and they snicker to each other when Miller and Monty come in and go straight to Miller’s room. Bellamy enjoys himself. He could get used to hanging out with Clarke more.

They do hang out more over the next few weeks. When someone in the house is going to be out late, he’ll hang out with her on the couch downstairs or they’ll sit on her bed and watch Netflix together. Once, he lets her sketch him, but she won’t show him when she’s done. If he’s going to be home late, he’ll text her to let her know, and makes a point of sticking his head into her room to say goodnight when he makes it back. At some point, he figures out she’s the one who locks the door at night, and starts trying to get to it before she can. One night he actually reaches around her to flip the lock first, and she gives him another Octavia-esque eye roll but can’t hold back her smile.

He starts making her text him her weekly schedule so he can wait up when she has a shift that ends late at night or early in the morning. 

When she has to take her car to the shop, it’s him she calls to pick her up from the mechanic and drive her to her shift. It’s his friend Raven’s shop, and she gives him an unimpressed look when he shows up straight from the precinct. 

“That piece of junk give out on you again, Blake?”

“Don’t insult her in front of me,” he says, patting his hood gently. He’s afraid if he touches it more than he absolutely needs to, he’ll dislodge something underneath and it’ll completely fall apart. Raven’s been doing her best to keep it running for him since he was in high school, mostly because she was also raised not to spend money she didn’t absolutely need to spend, but she’s been trying to talk him into getting a new car ever since he started getting a real paycheck. “And no, I’m here to pick my roommate up.”

Raven doesn’t comment but hugs Clarke before she gets into Bellamy’s car.

“How do you and Raven know each other?” Bellamy asks, merging onto the highway.

“Same cheating ex,” Clarke answers uneasily. “You?”

“We grew up together. I was there for the whole thing with Finn.” At his name, Clarke looks away and out the window.

“I love Raven now more than I ever loved Finn. She’s tragically straight, but I still think it’s the best way that situation could have played out.”

“I’ll say.”

It feels like a turning point for their friendship, and one he’s never really reached with a friend before. They start talking about serious things more, dropping each other breadcrumbs about their pasts and dreams for the future. All of a sudden, he considers Clarke one of his closest friends, in a way that even Miller and Octavia aren’t.

Then one night, midnight comes and goes and she doesn’t text him. He posts up on the couch with some dumb reality show he can talk back to, Octavia looking at him strangely when she comes down for a glass of water around three in the morning. It’s not until almost five that he hears the click of the key in the lock and quickly mutes the television.

“Clarke?” He says, though he knows it has to be her.

“Hey.” From that singular word he can hear how bone-tired she sounds. He’d been prepared to give her a hard time about not letting him know, how worried he was, but she collapses next to him on the couch and toes off her shoes and looks like she’s just been hit by a train. Any anger he has is put on hold so he can make room for the worry again.

“Are you okay?” He asks, shifting closer to her.

“No.” She lets him put his arm around her and wilts into his chest. It feels familiar; he remembers doing this with Octavia when she was younger, and he starts to stroke Clarke’s hair like he used to do for his sister. At the same time, it’s completely foreign territory. Their friendship is deep but they’re not that tactile with each other.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

For a few heartbeats he thinks she’s not going to say anything, but then she draws a deep shuddering breath.

“I was on rotation in the ER. It was almost– my shift was over, but on my way out an ambulance brought in some people from a car accident.” 

Her voice is steady, and it scares him more than if she’d broken down crying. At least he’d know what to do with that. When Octavia is melting down, it’s an emotional explosion. He’s not sure how to react to Clarke’s detached demeanor, like a black hole at her core, sucking in all of her light. 

“Finn was one of the drivers. He called me earlier tonight, drunk, and left me a bunch of messages about how he wanted me back and how he was on his way to the hospital to try to convince me in person. I stayed until everyone from the crash was out of surgery, but–” She takes another shaky breath and his arms tighten around her. “He killed a most of family, Bell. He’s in pretty bad shape himself, but people died and I can’t help feeling like it’s–”

“It’s not your fault,” Bellamy reassures her, rubbing her back. “It’s not your fault.”

Now Clarke’s tears start coming, and he keeps repeating the words until she falls asleep, completely exhausted. He covers her with a blanket and shifts out from under her so she can lay fully on the couch.

It’s a little after six now, so he calls in sick, first to his job and then to hers. He’s dozing in the armchair when Octavia is leaving for class, and she wakes him up to ask if Clarke is okay before she goes.

“I don’t know,” he whispers. She’s still asleep, but she doesn’t look like she’s resting, exactly. “I’ve got it, though. I already called the precinct. Go to class, and I’ll let you know if she needs you.”

“Okay, big brother.” She exits the room and he hears her exchanging solemn whispers with Monty and Jasper by the front door as they let themselves out. Miller just nods at him as he passes through later on his way to work, and Bellamy is kind of glad Clarke will have some space when she wakes. He knows grief, and he knows that having worried loved ones breathing down your neck is well-meaning but ultimately unhelpful.

It’s the smell of coffee that rouses her around one. She disappears into her room to change clothes after she drinks her first cup, and Bellamy is a little worried she’s going to shut him out, but she reappears about ten minutes later in her pajamas.

“I called the hospital. You don’t have to go in today.”

“Thanks,” she croaks.

He tries not to watch her as she gulps down a second mug.

“I don’t want to smother you, trying to guess what you need,” he tells her after she’s finished. “But don’t feel weird about asking me for anything. You can talk about it or not talk about it or… whatever you want. It’s completely up to you.”

“Thanks."

That seems to be where she’ll leave it, but he hasn’t been looking down at his book long before she starts talking.

“One of the other residents told me last night that she thinks to be a good doctor you have to distance yourself emotionally from the patients.”

“Do you believe her?”

“No. Maybe? This would be easier if I could do that.”

“I don’t know if I agree,” he says carefully. “I think worrying about people makes me a better cop. Empathizing with a victim, caring about someone’s safety, it makes the job harder but it makes it worth something.”

“You’re good at caring about people,” she says, giving him the shadow of a smile.

“So are you.” She starts to shake her head, but he won’t let her brush this off. She has to know. “All the little things you do for us– keeping us healthy, waiting up to know we’ve gotten home safe, even just locking the door every night. You care a lot, and it’s not a bad thing.”

“It feels selfish to do those things, I guess.” She picks at a thread coming off her pajama pants. “I do all those things because it makes  _ me  _ feel better. I’m not– I think you know that my dad died a few years ago? He got sick. It was really treatable at first, but my mom didn’t notice. She’s a doctor, she’s trained to be able to diagnose this stuff, and she didn’t see it until it was too late. And then almost a year later, my best friend gets mugged on his way home from work and bleeds out in an alley. He could have been okay, except that nobody knew he was missing until he was gone.”

Bellamy can’t speak, can’t even move. She’s never given this much of her past to him before, not all in one sitting. He’s collected little scraps of information here and there, but it was like all he had were the edge pieces of the puzzle, and here she is handing him the middle.

“I can’t help but think, if someone had just known where Wells was supposed to be, if someone had just put together that my dad had a bunch of innocent-looking symptoms that added up to something bad, then maybe they wouldn’t be dead.” Her eyes fill with tears again. “I try so hard to do everything I can, and then this happens. I don’t–” Her voice breaks and she bites down on her lip so hard he’s worried it will start bleeding.

He moves slowly, carefully, getting up from the armchair and crossing to sit next to her on the couch. She doesn’t stop him, even lets him take one of her hands in his.

“Clarke, it’s not your fault. Your dad, Wells, Finn, none of this is on you. You can’t keep everyone safe all the time. Bad things happen, and sometimes there’s nothing we can do.”

When he looks back later, he’ll realize he’s not completely sure what all he said to her. He does know that at some point, she ends up in his arms again and they turn on an  _ NCIS _ marathon that she drifts in and out of as she naps. He hands her over to Monty when he gets home, and they all take turns looking out for her over the next few weeks. 

It’s pretty rough for a while. She doesn’t sleep much, and if he can hear her rustling around or sees light coming from the crack under her door, he can’t sleep either. Finn passes away, and Clarke can’t bring herself to go to the funeral. Bellamy stands next to Raven, who is angry at the world, and tries to remember the optimistic Finn he’d known as a kid instead of the one who hurt people. 

Clarke gets better slowly. Octavia coaxes her into joining the house for family dinners, Monty brings her lunch on his breaks from work, Jasper makes her laugh. Bellamy even comes home one day to find her playing an air guitar duet with Miller to some nineties grunge/pop. 

For his part, he does what he always does: he just tries to be there. They don’t talk about serious things as often, don’t spend as much one-on-one time together because the rest of the house is trying to look after her. But he makes her coffee in the morning and moves her glasses to her bedside table when she leaves them lying around and unclogs her drain after she complains about it. He makes sure her favorite brand of ice cream is always stocked in the freezer and waits up with her when their friends are out late and sends her links to videos of cats getting scared by cucumbers when he’s bored at work.

She’s almost back to her normal self when it all goes wrong.

He’s staking out a suspect when it happens. He’s texted her and told her he’ll be home sometime between dinner and ten o’clock, depending on paperwork, and at the time he really believes it. He’s chilling in a diner with a novel he really has been trying to read, but hasn’t had the time recently, and waiting for a known drug dealer to show up.

His partner is across the room at the counter, chatting up one of the waitresses despite being twenty years her senior and married. Bellamy is disgusted, especially because the earpiece he’s wearing means he can hear every word.

The perp comes in and his partner gives him a not-so-subtle once-over. The next thing Bellamy knows, he’s on the ground with his hands on his head, his partner is bleeding, and he’s caught in a hostage situation.

It feels like something out of a movie, or a television show. There are about six other hostages in the restaurant, three staff, the dealer’s client, and a teenage couple that had been on an awkward first date. Bellamy had dialed his precinct under the table, then dropped his phone face-down in the booth so the perp wouldn’t notice. It feels like a long time before the cops even show up, and it’s even longer before the situation is resolved.

In the end, Bellamy is able to position the dealer so that someone from the outside can get a clear shot. He’s always been good with words, but he doesn’t feel proud so much as he does relief and shock when it’s all over

It’s a little after one a.m. before all the hostages, him included, are checked out by the EMTs, he’s been debriefed by his captain, and is released to go home. They’ve kept his phone as evidence because it recorded everything that had happened, so it doesn’t occur to him that he’s probably got tons of missed calls and texts from Clarke until she ambushes him when he practically falls through the door.

“Bellamy,” she gasps, rushing to embrace him. He’s so worn out, still so damn relieved, that he can’t do anything but cling to her. 

“Hey.”

“Are you alright?” She asks, flipping the lock and dragging him over to the couch. He follows her in a daze, nearly tripping over his feet as he goes. When that happens, she changes course and slips her hand into his to lead him up the stairs and to his room.

“I’m okay now,” he says, fully aware of how terrible he sounds. “I’m sorry I didn’t call.”

“Don’t worry about it tonight,” she says, pushing him down on a bed that he belatedly realizes is his. She had let go of his hand to get him to sit, but he takes it again when she sits down next to him. “I’ll yell at you about it tomorrow,” she promises him, bringing her hand, which is still linked with his, to her forehead and taking a deep breath. “I’m just glad you’re here. I can’t lose you too.”

She’s so upset-looking, so frazzled, and he’s so tired. All he can think to do is press his lips to the worry lines on her forehead and drag her down beside him on his bed. 

“Will you stay?” He hears himself ask. He’s not entirely sure his mind is connected to his body anymore. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”

There’s a quiet pause, and then she curls into him, her hand still clasped in his, and leans her forehead against his chest. He drapes his other arm on top of her and lets her steady breathing lull him to sleep.

When he wakes in the morning, she’s still there and she’s already staring at him with those serious blue eyes.

“Clarke,” he mumbles, feeling her jump under his arm. “If there’s one thing Twilight taught us, it’s that watching someone sleep is extremely creepy.”

She lets out a single exasperated breath of a laugh that hits somewhere near his collarbone and nestles closer.

“How can you string together a complete thought this early in the morning?”

“What time is it?”

“Like, eight thirty.”

“I’m a morning person,” he reminds her, forcing his eyes open. He’d never taken his contacts out and his eyes are killing him for it. He takes them out quickly and reaches over her– nearly rolling on top of her in the process– to grab his glasses. All he’s wanted since everything started last night is to see her face. “It’s more notable that you’re speaking in complete sentences before coffee.”

“I had some right before you got home,” she admits. “And I think I’m still running on some adrenaline.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m pretty sure you have a good excuse.” Her eyes have moved to his arm and her fingers follow, tracing his freckles like she’s trying to find constellations.

“My excuse is that I’m a cop and my job gets unexpectedly dangerous sometimes.” He’s sure he’ll tell her in more detail later on, but for now he has other things he wants to talk about. “So keep that in mind when I tell you what I’m about to tell you.”

She swallows hard and nods, which he takes as a sign to keep talking.

“I’m falling pretty hard for you, Clarke. I thought, raising Octavia, that I knew what it meant to have someone who makes me look forward to coming home, but I’ve never had someone in my life who I can trust to have my back like I try to have everyone else’s. You care with so much of yourself and I– I’m crazy about you.” Her cheeks have turned a little bit pink, and it wipes his mind practically blank. “But if you need to be with someone who you won’t have to worry about as much, I get that.”

“That probably would be easier,” she says softly, but she’s smiling this sweet smile at him and he’s getting mixed signals. “But my dad had a nine-to-five desk job, and look what happened with him. It’s like you said, bad things happen sometimes and there’s nothing we can do.”

“You’re so uplifting in the morning.”

“I’m quoting you, nerd,” She says, pinching his arm gently.

“So your response to ‘I’m falling for you’ is ‘We’re powerless to prevent tragedy?’” He’s impressed with how even his voice sounds. He’s freaking nervous.

“I’m trying to say I’m falling for you too,” she laughs, kissing him soft and way too short. He kisses her harder and longer, rolling them so he’s basically on top of her again. She starts to laugh when he discovers she’s ticklish along her sides, and it’s still one of his favorite sounds in the world. 

The only thing better, in his mind, is her response when Octavia asks her later if she’s sure she can handle dating a cop. She smiles up at him and says, “He’s worth the worry.”


End file.
